Comet C/2023 A3 as seen by the STEREO-A SECCHI HI-1 coronagraph.

Comet C/2023 A3 as seen by the STEREO-A SECCHI HI-1 coronagraph. Striations can be seen in the dust tail, and interactions between the faint ion tail and the solar wind can be observed.
The solar Corona was subtracted out to show the solar wind more clearly. The contrast of the comet tail and the solar wind was enhanced with local histogram equalization.
The vertical lines above Venus on the left and the comet are saturation artefacts from the CCD sensor.

Credit: NASA / STEREO-A / SECCHI HI-1 / Simeon Schmauß
processed from the raw data: secchi.nrl.navy.mil/postflight/hi_1/L0/a/img/20241004/

Click on picture to start video

My input: these images show aswell how to interpret the antitail of the comet.

Heliophysics Big Year - Coffies

 

I followed an online solar lecture as part of Nasa's Heliophysics Big Year. When searching for more solar lectures I found following previous recorded lectures :

* The Sun touches everything - see this link
Dr Shea Hess-Webber, Stanford University

Prof. Amy Keesee, University of New Hampshire

Erick Powell, Boston University
This lecture is aswell part of Coffies Seminars (Consequences of Fields and Flows in the Interior and Exterior of the Sun

* Solar Cycle 25 by Dr. Lisa Upton, Southwest Research Institute - see this link

New astrobooks

I bought two second-hand astrobooks in "De Slegte" :

- Witte gaten (translated from Buchi bianchi) from Carlo Rovelli and

- Het tijdperk van onzekerheid (translated from Das Zeitalter der Unschärfe) from Tobias Hürter 

With those two books my library counts 65 astronomical books.

Compilation video of Comet C/2023 A3 Tsuchinshan-Atlas

I made a video of my best images of Comet C/2023 A3 Tsuchinshan-ATLAS. Click on the picture below to start the video; video is best seen on your PC

Selfie with Dr Thierry Pauwels - Minor Planets

During the celebration of 50y Aquila I took the opportunity the make a selfie with the Belgian astronomer and >100 minor planet discoverer Dr. Thierry Pauwels.

Comet C/2023 A3 Tsuchinshan Atlas October 25

A combination of clear and cloudy skies. I did set up my Star Adventurer 2i with Nikon D7500 but Snap connection failed again. I really need to solve this .. maybe getting a complete new snap connector. 

Next to this I set up my EQAZ6 with TLAPO80/480 and ASI2600. Polar allignement was "excellent" and I used sharpcap to capture images. Increasing the exposure time resulted in an error. Switching over to N.I.N.A. wasn't successful either. Finally, I switched over to ASIStudio and found out that ASI2600 power was disconnected. I could fix this but in the meantime the Comet was about 5° above the horizon. 

Some images shot are posted below; I'm still seeing the a faint anti-tail, the huge dusttail but no plasmatail. I made some images using my OIII filter; no more details vissible. 

Comet C/2023 A3 Tsuchinshan Atlas October 22

Clouds dissapeared for a half hour, enough to take some images of comet C/2023 A3 TsushinShan Atlas. The comet still has a anti-tail but under a bigger angle.

Image were taken with Nikon D7500 on my Star Adventurer 2i mount. Total integration time was 340s (17x20s).

Stacking was done using APP and final editing with CS4 en DeNoise AI.